ARC Distinguished CUNY Fellow Okome Edits Two New Books

Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome, ARC Distinguished CUNY Fellow and professor of political science at Brooklyn College, is editor of two new books on self-organization and state-society relations in contemporary Nigerian politics. Nigeria’s associational life is highly developed and multifaceted, extending far beyond civil society organizations and NGOs to community-based forms of self-help, ethnic or religious representation, and even militias. Entire communities in Nigeria have had to band together to repair roads, build health centers, and repair broken transformers owned by the public utilities company, all from levies.

State Fragility, State Formation, and Human Security in Nigeria (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013) considers the roots, dynamics, and successes of the emergence of such broader forms of civil society, as well as the costs, ambivalences, and contradictions. Contesting the Nigerian State: Civil Society and the Contradictions of Self Organization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) explores questions about state capacity, as well as the nature of the relationship between state and civil society, and the implication for the social, economic, and political health and well-being of the democratizing polity and its citizens.